Equality of opportunity in four measures of well-being

Xavi Ramos () and Daniel Gerszon Mahler ()
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Daniel Gerszon Mahler: World Bank

Working Papers from Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona

Abstract: A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policymakers have doubled down on e orts to go beyond income when designing policies to enhance well-being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to achieve a high level of well-being. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure well-being in four di erent ways including incomes. This makes it possible to determine if the way well-being is measured matters for identifying who the opportunity-deprived are and for tracking inequality of opportunity over time. We find that, regardless of how well-being is measured, the same people are opportunity-deprived and equality of opportunity has improved over the past 10 years. This suggests that going beyond income has little relevance if the objective is to provide equal opportunities.

Keywords: Equality of opportunity; measurement; responsibility; e ort; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-ltv
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https://ecap.uab.cat/RePEc/doc/wpdea1803.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Equality of Opportunity in Four Measures of Well‐Being (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uab:wprdea:wpdea1803

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